City working on app for CityLine Trolley

The Kokomo Transportation Department is working on offering a “where’s my bus?” style app that will allow riders of the city of Kokomo’s free public transportation to track in real time the bus they’re waiting for.

The Transportation Department is working with its provider Synchromatics and its paratransit software Easy Rides to develop a free tracking app for riders of the CityLine Trolley, the city’s fixed-route public transportation system, that will be available to download from both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store.

The city is paying a one-time cost of $4,950 and a recurring annual service fee of $1,020 for the app.

Officials said last week during the bimonthly Kokomo Howard County Governmental Coordinating Council meeting that the app will be “basic” but would be updated in the future and the city would not be charged more for those updates.

Jan Basil, head of the transportation department, said there isn’t a date yet when the app will be up and running and available to download.

When it is, though, the hope is it will operate similarly to the tracking apps offered by other area transit systems, such as MITS in Muncie and CityBus of Lafayette and West Lafayette, and serve as a tool letting riders know if they’ve missed a bus or if it’s time to start heading to the bus stop to catch the bus.

“We’ve been really trying hard to get up with the times because we’re kind of behind,” Basil said. “So many people are so used to the technology world that we need to step up and get there.”